Catching up, Part 2: Python Magazine Update

So, it’s been 1 month since we officially announced Python Magazine’s existence. I’m very happy (and even more relieved) to report that things are going wonderfully so far.

In these early days prior to the actual release of the first issue, the focus is primarily on content development. This is also called “getting articles in the door so we can publish a magazine”. The goal here is to avoid the scenario where you wake up on September 1, say “hey, I need content for the issue coming out on October 1!”.

It’s nearly impossible to attract authors, get good proposals, get authors to write articles, edit those articles, validate the code samples that come with the articles, format the articles, and compile them into a magazine you’d actually want to read… all in 30 days. This is why magazines (and even online publishers) shoot for a backlog of articles. Depending on the size and scope of the publication (and some other stuff like how time sensitive the material is), that backlog can be anywhere from 1 month (for online stuff, mostly) to a year. We’ve chosen a magic number of 4 months.

The initial goal was to commission 4 months worth of content before September 1. This means we’d like to have signed contracts with willing authors agreeing to write at least one article for us. As it turns out, we not only commissioned 4 months worth of content by *August* 1, but we’ll probably have almost 4 months worth of content *delivered* by September 1.

An editorial calendar – this is where you can see what kind of content is coming up in future issues of the magazine.

A sample article! Sometime before October 1, we’ll probably post a sample article that is more or less representative of the content we’ll have in the magazine. I have my eye on an article we might use for such a purpose now – but you’ll have to watch the PyMag site for updates.

As usual, if you’d like to write for Python Magazine, drop us a line, and/or join the authors mailing list by sending a blank email to authors-subscribe at lists dot pythonmagazine dot com